Romney as Job Creator Clashes with Bain Record of Job Cuts

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign misses few opportunities to promote his record creating jobs, including his role in taking Staples Inc. from a start-up to the world’s largest office-supply retailer. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

July 20 (Bloomberg) -- Republican presidential candidate
Mitt Romney’s campaign misses few opportunities to promote his
record creating jobs, including his role in taking Staples Inc.
from a start-up to the world’s largest office-supply retailer.

“You’d have a president who has spent his life in business
-- small business, big business -- and who knows something about
how jobs are created and how we compete around the world,” he
said at a campaign stop last month at Buddy Brew Coffee in
Tampa, Florida.

What Romney skips is his experience in eliminating jobs.
It’s a facet of his career that presents a particular challenge
for the Republican primary frontrunner: Tough business decisions
don’t necessarily translate into good politics.

As head of private equity firm Bain Capital LLC, Romney was
the lead deal-maker, buying and selling companies to make money
for investors. Whether companies boomed or filed for bankruptcy,
the Boston-based firm found profits for Romney, its other
executives and investors. Romney, who spent most of his career
at Bain, estimated his wealth in 2007 at as much as $250
million. He has yet to update his financial status for the 2012
presidential campaign.

Entrepreneurs and corporate founders “create the bulk of
the jobs, not the financiers,” said Marc Wolpow, a former Bain
managing director who left in 1999 and is now co-chief executive
officer of Audax Group, which manages more than $4.8 billion.

“That is not necessarily a good political story for a
candidate with a buyout background,” said Wolpow, a Democrat-leaning independent who said he would consider backing Romney in
2012.

1,600 Jobs Cut

At Dade Behring Inc., a medical-testing company based in
Deerfield, Illinois, Bain cut at least 1,600 jobs during a
series of acquisitions before the firm entered into bankruptcy
in 2002. Romney foreshadowed those cuts in a speech to employees
shortly after Bain acquired the firm.

DDi Corp., an electronics company in Anaheim, California,
filed for bankruptcy in 2003 after Bain sold shares in the
company generating at least $85.5 million and billed $10 million
in management fees.

GS Industries Inc., a steel company in Charlotte, North
Carolina, filed for bankruptcy in 2001 after workers said a
chief executive hired under Bain made missteps, including
installing managers who lacked industry expertise, former
employees said.

Romney Held Responsible

Employees who lost jobs at Bain-controlled companies more
than a decade ago say they still hold Romney responsible.

“I would not vote for him for anything,” said Phyllis
Detro, 68, who lost her job at a Bain-owned office paper
products factory in Marion, Indiana, closed in 1995. “I’d like
to see the jobs that he’s created. He has taken away jobs.”

In a presidential campaign becoming a referendum on jobs as
the economy struggles with a 9.2 percent unemployment rate,
Romney’s private sector credentials are coming under scrutiny.

A video played when Republican Jon Huntsman Jr. announced
his presidential candidacy in New Jersey on June 21 said
Huntsman “built things, built jobs -- didn’t just buy them.”
Huntsman is a former Utah governor and executive at Huntsman
Corp., a chemical company that started as his family’s business
in 1970.

Political Scrutiny

Huntsman is following a script written at the start of
Romney’s political career. In a 1994 race against the late U.S.
Senator Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, Romney was
trumpeting his business credentials and leading in the polls --
until Kennedy’s campaign turned the spotlight on Bain-backed job
cuts at an American Pad & Paper, or Ampad, factory in Indiana
that was closed in 1995. Romney went on to win election as
governor of Massachusetts, serving from 2003 to 2007.

In 1984, Romney co-founded Bain Capital, whose affiliates
now manage about $65 billion. In a corporate statement e-mailed
to Bloomberg News, Bain Capital said the firm’s record “will
undoubtedly” be distorted in the political debate. “We are
proud of the role that our people-intensive, analytical approach
has played in growing companies and delivering superior
investment returns,” it stated.

In addition to Staples, Romney’s campaign cites successes
at Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Domino’s Pizza Inc., which is now
the world’s second largest pizza-maker behind Yum! Brands Inc.’s
Pizza Hut, and the Sports Authority Inc., the Englewood,
Colorado-based sporting goods chain.

Obama’s Credentials

Andrea Saul, a Romney campaign spokeswoman, said his
business record gives him more expertise than President Barack
Obama to “focus on job creation and turn around our nation’s
faltering economy.”

Tom Stemberg, a founder of Framingham, Massachusetts-based
Staples who convinced Romney in 1985 to help finance the idea
for the stores and plot their expansion, said: “He was a
brilliant corporate director.”

Romney’s role with companies varied. With Staples, he sat
on the company board for more than a decade. With many others,
he left oversight and daily management to his associates
appointed to company boards and executives running the
businesses, said Wolpow. Executives of several companies bought
by Bain said they had little or no interaction with Romney.

Preserved Jobs

Geoffrey Rehnert, a former managing director at Bain who
worked for the firm until 1999, said that while Bain was focused
on making money, its strategy was to create businesses that
created jobs. Rehnert, who is now co-chief executive officer
with Wolpow at Audax, said he’s “certain that Bain Capital was
a net creator of jobs by a wide margin,” while he had no data
to support that. At a minimum, Wolpow said, Bain helped preserve
jobs that otherwise might have been lost.

Bain and the campaign didn’t respond to requests for job
creation estimates.

A Bloomberg News review of several Bain deals during
Romney’s tenure showed that workers in some firms had indications
their jobs might be in jeopardy soon after Bain moved into
management. In other cases, pink slips arrived after Bain and its
investors had collected their profits and left debts behind.

Interviews with former employees and executives at Bain and
companies it controlled, along with a review of Bain’s
activities described in public documents and news accounts,
paint a picture of an operation that wasn’t focused on expanding
employment. Instead, Bain’s mission, like most private equity
firms, was to generate gains for its investors.

Dade International

In 1994, Bain and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. acquired Dade
International, a medical diagnostics firm that had been a unit
of Baxter International Inc.

Soon after, Romney told employees in a speech that Bain
planned to restructure Dade and resell it for a profit, said a
former employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because he
feared negative repercussions. Fulfilling that mission would
lead to merging companies, consolidating operations and
eliminating employees.

Michael Rumbin, vice president of technology at the Baxter
division, said his responsibility under the new company became
cutting half of the research projects. Projects were eliminated
that had little possibility of success, though the reductions
were a “relatively traumatic experience” for workers, he said.

Dade was combined with several other companies, got a new
name, Dade Behring, and became one of the largest makers of
diagnostic tests. Each acquisition was followed by job
eliminations. At least 1,600 employees were dismissed from 1996
to 1999, according to SEC reports.

Plant Closures

Redundancies led to cuts and plant closures, a standard
practice when companies are merged, said Scott Garrett, who was
the chief executive officer at Dade from 1994 to 1997. “It’s
very unfair to suggest that Mitt Romney was anything but a very
good business person,” said Garrett.

Bain and Goldman cashed in on their investment in June
1999, selling back shares to Dade for $365.4 million.

Dade borrowed so much money to make that payment that when
sales declined and interest rates rose the company struggled to
pay its creditors. Standard & Poor’s downgraded its outlook for
Dade Behring to negative from stable. The company later filed
for bankruptcy.

“They leveraged this thing to the hilt and got out when
they could,” Rumbin said. “We were left holding the bag.”

It didn’t work out as well for Rumbin. His position was
eliminated.

“These guys worked there for two years and ended up as
millionaires,” he said. “I worked there for 25 years and I’m
not a millionaire.”

Dade emerged from bankruptcy and was acquired by Siemens
AG.

DDi Corp.

Bain’s 1997 investment in DDi, a circuit board maker, also
illustrates how Bain came out ahead even when a company it
bought ultimately faltered.

Bain initially invested $46.3 million in the company,
according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. After
taking DDi public, Bain sold shares generating at least $85.5
million, according to a Bloomberg News review of SEC filings.

Bain also collected management fees. A DDi prospectus filed
with the SEC in February 2001 described payments of $10 million
to Bain when it provided consulting and other services.

In the months after Bain sold shares, DDi’s performance
deteriorated, the company eliminated jobs and then filed for
bankruptcy.

Shareholders protested, filing a class action lawsuit
saying DDi, in advertising its initial public offering, withheld
information suggesting results were about to sour. Defendants
eventually settled the case for $4.4 million, according to court
records.

DDi emerged from bankruptcy and continues to operate.

GS Technologies Corp.

At another Bain company, bad management and a lack of
oversight from Romney’s firm contributed to losses and job cuts,
according to former employees.

Bain invested in GS Technologies Corp. in 1993 and merged
it with another company in 1995 to form GS Industries Inc.,
based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The combined company was the
largest producer of steel wire rods in the U.S.

Chief Executive Officer Roger Regelbrugge, who had come
from Georgetown Industries Inc., the company that merged with GS
Technologies, said he met Romney at a luncheon in Boston, and
may have had some subsequent conversations. The bulk of his
communication with Bain was through two Bain executives who
served on the GS board, he said.

When Regelbrugge stepped down as CEO in 2000, his
successor, Mark Essig, replaced top staff with colleagues from a
previous job who didn’t know the GS business, said Regelbrugge,
who remained on the board. That contributed to the company’s
decline, Regelbrugge said, adding that he relayed his concerns
to Bain representatives. Essig didn’t respond to phone and e-mail requests for comment.

“Bain pleaded with me to give my successor a chance,”
said Regelbrugge. “They showed more patience than they needed
to.”

Business Deterioration

At a steel plant in Kansas City, Missouri, one new
supervisor had previously sold mattresses, said Steve Morrow,
59, who worked at the plant for 32 years and represented workers
there as president of United Steelworkers Local 13.

The business deterioration was made worse by declining
steel prices and difficult business conditions, Regelbrugge
said.

In 2001, the company shut the Kansas City plant, which it
said was losing money. More than 700 workers lost their jobs.
Retirees and those eligible to retire lost their health benefits
and life insurance, said John Wiseman, a staff representative
with the United Steelworkers.

Bankruptcy Protection

GS Industries began reorganizing under bankruptcy
protection in 2001. In a bankruptcy court filing, the company
blamed lower steel prices that resulted in record levels of low-priced imports into the U.S.

That explanation doesn’t satisfy Morrow, who remembers
seeing his former colleagues struggle to find jobs with health
benefits. Today, when he hears Romney campaign on job creation,
he said, “It makes me about half sick.”

In contrast, Bain flourished under Romney’s management and
the business model he installed.

The firm started with fewer than 10 employees and a $37
million fund that Romney helped to create. When Romney left in
1999 to help organize the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake
City, Bain had 115 employees managing $4 billion in assets.

Successful Business Model

Instead of just advising companies, Romney and several
partners would invest in them, provide financial and management
advice and then typically sell their stake five to seven years
later.

“The returns were very, very good relative to others in
the industry and this persisted while Romney was there,” said
Steven Kaplan, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth
School of Business who specializes in private equity.
“Everybody has copied them. He was spectacularly successful.”

The company earned Romney much of his fortune, valued at
between $190 million and $250 million, according to a financial
disclosure report filed when he ran for president in 2007.

Romney has tempered his claims about the jobs he created at
Bain over the years. In his unsuccessful 1994 Senate campaign,
Romney said he helped create 10,000 jobs, which was challenged
by his opponents. In his campaign for his party’s 2012
nomination, Romney has avoided such specific claims.

“Sometimes I was successful and helped create jobs, other
times I was not,” Romney said in announcing his candidacy on
June 2 in Stratham, New Hampshire.